1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to the field of personal comfort devices, specifically to evaporative personal cooling devices.
2. Prior Art
Throughout history, people have used various methods to keep themselves cool on hot days and in hot environments, especially when engaged in strenuous activities. Simple methods of personal cooling include wearing a moistened bandanna around one""s neck, shading oneself with a hat or parasol, fanning oneself, and using portable misting devices. All of these have at least one of the following disadvantages:
They require the user to hold a device or to do something to get its benefit (which is not only bothersome, but such activity can generate more heat and exhaustion)
They wet the user""s clothing
They provide only short-term relief
They provide relatively poor cooling power
U.S. Pat. No. 5,802,8 of Ted N. Strauss (granted Sep. 8, 1998) shows a cooler that uses a wind-chill effect within the device and delivers the resulting coolness to the skin of the user without requiring the user to hold anything or to get wet. However, this device is not as affordable as would be desirable, creates a bothersome humming noise close to the ears, and makes a questionable fashion statement.
With the development of modern technologies, new ways have been found to produce a cooling effect. Some systems have employed elaborate mechanisms for pumping cool gels or fluids through a shirt or vest; others are essentially portable freon-type refrigerators, still others transfer coolness from a refrigerator or freezer to the body over time via phase-change substances. Some have proposed the use of compressed gas to create a stream of moving air across the skin. Peltier cells have also been explored for use in personal cooling devices. Still, each of these methods has serious drawbacks for the average user due to cost, complexity, and/or lack of effectiveness over time.
More recently, Misty Mate, Inc., of Gilbert, Ariz., has introduced a device under the trademark Arctic Blast. This device is strapped to the front of a user""s body, and blows air and a water mist up the front of the user""s body. This approach has several major disadvantages: 1) it wets the user""s shirt, 2) because it blows over the user""s shirt, it either doesn""t cool the user""s torso or requires the user to remove his or her shirt to receive its benefit, 3) it destroys the user""s hairdo, and 4) it is bulky, unattractive, and relatively expensive.
Several objects and advantages of this invention are to provide an improved portable cooling device which . . .
Delivers significant evaporative cooling directly to the skin of the user""s back
Does not require the user to hold it
Requires the user to do little or nothing to get its benefit
Can be comfortably worn on a user""s body
Is attractive and easily affordable
Other objects are to provide and inexpensive, unobtrusive, lightweight, hands-free, powerful, wearable evaporative cooler. Further objects and advantages will become apparent from a consideration of the drawings and ensuing description.
A waist-mounted evaporative personal cooling device consists of a blower or other means to move air, a water reservoir, a means to inject water from the reservoir as a mist of droplets into the moving air, and a housing designed to guide the fan-forced air and injected mist under the user""s shirt or blouse and directly onto the skin of the user""s back.